#the former of which sort of has this problem but really the issue is that she's a snoozefest of a person

[utilitycaster]

Ok so I have to admit. I get like...structurally, why the staff would have soulbinding, because it does add a slight sense of urgency (although between the destruction of the Bloody Bridge and however much time it takes for a resurrection, should there be one, unless Ludinus stashed a clone on Ruidus or the spell takes effect there, I think there's a decent amount of time before he returns). But it is kind of annoying, especially given that Matt notably made resurrection more difficult than it is rules as written and that the games Critical Role/Darrington have put out have both had significantly reduced resurrection abilities, that these evil wizards just keep fucking coming back. The best way to put it is that it makes perfect sense, doesn't compel me though; I think it's pretty widely agreed that Delilah has long since worn out her welcome and Ludinus is pretty much at that point as well. Trent was actually quite interesting in that immortality really didn't seem to be on his radar; Halas is fun because his prolonged existence is the result of someone fucking with him; and the Kryn dynasty is a refreshingly neutral approach to arcane immortality. And more generally I think that while there's a benefit to having villains appear, absolutely wreck the heroes, and for the heroes to learn about them and pursue them and ultimately defeat them, it really is a case of diminishing returns. My potentially unpopular opinion is that I do not in fact find the Iron Shepherds arc to be abrupt or cut short: this group kidnapped three members of the party, killed another, and then the party destroyed them. Three beats. Absolutely perfect. Another would have drawn it out too much. And yeah now that we've heard Ludinus's backstory and the party doesn't seem inclined to dig into any details that would be interesting anyway, and they're either doing what he wanted to do anyway or else will presumably destroy or drive away Predathos, it's like this bitch is still out there? what's the fucking point.

[bonny-kookoo]

Jungkook

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 [Intro]

Hearts can get hurt so easily in this cruel world. But maybe it's time he opens his own up for someone else.

Tags/Warnings: Non-Idol Jungkook, Dog Hybrid!Reader, former criminal!Jungkook, mentions of past neglect/abuse, reader has some pretty bad psychological problems (OCD, Anxiety, Selective mutism, hints at an eating disorder), hypersomnia, old to recovery, hurt and lots of comfort, angst, Jungkook has some problems with aggression and swears a lot, more TBA in future chapters

Length: 2k words

There is no taglist for this fic.

A/N: Boo. Also you can have early access to this and other selected fics on my Patreon!

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"You might've noticed the color of their collars." the worker says, barely pulling Jungkook away so an excited Hybrid boy runs past- and not into- him. "They all have a specific meaning for us. Over there, the brown ones-" she points, and while Jungkook looks disinterested, he's acgually actively listening. "They're healthy and don't have any physical or behavioral issues, and can therefore be adopted with no limitations. Over there, black, that means the young hybrid has been taken in because the former owners have passed away. He's gonna keep wearing that color until he decides that he's done mourning." the worker explains as she walks around the main 'Social Area' of the shelter.

There's a couple of hybrids sitting together on the floor, all bunnies he notices- and all wear the same colored collar. "Pink means they're on medications. The tags on their collars show which one's." she says when she notices Jungkook looking at the small group. "Yellow means severe behavioral problems. This young boy, for example, has bad anxiety." the worker explains as they walk a bit further.

"...and green?" he mumbles, unable to mask his interest.

"Physical disability." she says softly, as the girl talking to the yellow collared boy shifts a little, one leg replaced by a prosthetic below the knee. "You'll get used to it, don't worry. They adapt quickly and tend not to really care about it." the worker reassures when she spots the slight shift in Jungkooks gaze.

Once they sit down, he signs some papers before the worker leaves him for a moment to get an employee badge for him. He's busy resting his face on his hand, already painfully bored of it all- he's gonna be watched the entire shift he needs to work for the next few months anyway, because considering that his crimes include violence, there's no way they'll trust him to handle any of these hybrids alone.

It's when he notices someone asleep in the corner of the social area, wearing a bright red collar.

"Alright, this vest should fit you, you can just put that over your regular clothes. Those plastic coverings go over your shoes so you don't bring any dirt in. And this-" she offers a plastic card with a clip. "-goes somewhere we can clearly see it. Alright?" she beams, and Jungkook nods.

"Hey uh -" he wonders, gaining the employee's attention. "What do red collars mean?" he wonders, and somehow, her entire posture and expression change slightly.

"Ah.." she sighs sadly. "...those are non-adoptable hybrids. They're basically permanently homed here for the rest of their lifes." she explains.

"So they just.. stay here forever?" he wonders, and she nods.

"Their status is checked every year, but almost all red one's we have tend to not show any improvements after getting here." she says, sorting the papers he'd signed earlier. "terminal illnesses, severe disability or extreme behavioral problems can put someone in the red category. Most never get out."

"Whats with her?" he asks before he can stop himself, nodding towards where you sleep near a window, facing away from everyone.

"..has been here for four years now. She doesn't talk, mostly sleeps, and doesn't like physical contact. Also has OCD- she only eats one specific brand of hybrid food her old owner forced her to eat, and is convinced that if she looks someone in the eyes, they will die." she explains. "She's been here since I've started working here. Very sweet if you look past all her issues- but I agree that she's not fit for a regular home."

Jungkook doesn't answer.

He doesn't even want to attempt to imagine what you must've gone through to end in a situation like this. It had always pissed him off how most hybrids were treated by society- the whole system royally fucked up in his opinion, but then again, he's not a picture perfect citizen either.

Otherwise, he wouldn't be here.

"Alright then, let's go into the kitchens!" the worker snaps him out of his mind, leading him away from the social area.

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"Do you want to bring it to her?" Hana, the worker, asks him when she notices him looking at you again.

"I- uh.. Do you think that's a good idea?" he mumbles almost, cringing a little at the food they've put in a bowl for you - looking like dry cereal, if anything - more so like plain dog food. But then again, if that's what you chose, he shouldn't judge too much.

Though he can't help but feel like in a span of four years, how come no one has ever managed to at least get you to accept decent food?

Hana waves him off. "Just place it close to her and maybe sit with her. You can take a break until she's done and bring the dish back." she just says, before walking off to handle the other hybrids who're still waiting for their lunch.

Jungkook sighs, walking towards you with the bowl and his own lunch in hands, carefully getting closer to where you're sitting in front of the window. Your back is turned towards him, and your tail limp on the floor. While you don't move, he can see your ears turn towards him.

He knows they just told him to sit with you so they don't have to look after him like a kid.

"Uh- here." he mumbles, putting the bowl close to you. At first, you don't react at all- and he's fine with that, quite honestly. He just starts to eat his own meal, breaking the chopsticks apart before digging in, while you simply pull the bowl closer, taking a handful of hybrid pellets. "Does that even taste of anything?" he mumbles more or less, and he notices a slight stutter in your movements, signaling that you're definitely aware of his words directed at you.

He notices how you put a singular pellet close to him without turning around - offering it in a way, and Jungkook doesn't know what to think of it. But, being curious as ever, he doesn't hesitate to eat the bland looking ball of whatever it might be.

It tastes just as bland as it looks.

"Damn, what the hell.." he cringes a little before looking your way. "You do know there's other options than.. That, right?" Jungkook offers - but you shake your head at that. "No one's gonna bite the dust if you have something decent to eat." he shrugs to himself, rather indulging in his lunch to get the weird taste from his tongue.

All of this just makes him all the more upset at whoever forced you into such a state.

Taehyung is a dog hybrid too, after all. And somewhat the reason he's forced to do this whole social work shit at all- considering that Jungkook broke someone's collarbone for tying his best friend by the neck and leaving him in a yard just for the fun of it.

Just because he's a hybrid.

You wave a little with your hand, apparently trying to signal that he can leave- but he just stretches out his legs, lays on his back and rests his head on his arms, before closing his eyes. "Poke me when you're done eating or something." he just shrugs and doesn't notice that you take the chance of his closed eyes to look at his face.

He looks young, but mature at the same time. There's a butterfly stitch on his eyebrow, the other side decorated with a silver piercing. His lip seems like it had had some injury too recently- but it too is sporting a silver piercing, the ring sitting simple on the skin, yet the effect of it is undeniable. There's a softness to his face, and yet, taking all the features in, you can spot some rough edges here and there.

You wonder if he has many friends.

He seems a bit grumpy but nice, nonetheless. No one's ever attempted to try your food, let alone be so direct in trying to convince you of letting go of this old habit. You're not stupid. You know no one's gonna die if you eat something else. It's simply your body that doesn't seem to get the memo. It's there every time, vividly in your head. If you eat something other than this, someone's going to get mad.

And You don't trust anyone in this place.

Not after attempting to try a tiny piece of leftover cheese from the table, just for a tiger hybrid to angrily snarl at you. It's always your fault in the end, it's always you who has to take the blame, because if you can't talk, how can you stand up for yourself, explain yourself? No one wants to listen to you anyways.

You poke the dozing new guy. His name tag reads 'Jeon Jungkook'.

He wakes up, yawns. Stretches his arms, his legs, sits up and looks your way. You only look at his neck, barely able to see his mouth move as he speaks. "Done?" he mumbles, and you shrug, pushing your leftovers back towards him. "Come on. I know it tastes like shit but that's all you can eat?" he asks, and you shrug again. Why does he care how much you eat? "Here." He scoots a bit closer. "half of that. At least. Eat that or my leftovers." he offers, threatens almost, unable to push you off to the side like everyone else apparently does. He just sees so much of Jimin in you; his best buddy's hybrid, a rescue as well. And while Jungkook isn't as gentle as Yoongi was with Jimin when the cat hybrid was in his phase of recovery, he still can't ever shake off the images, the scenes he'd witnessed back in the day.

He fucking hates how some people treat hybrids.

And maybe that's why he stays until you've eaten as much as you can, shaking your head at some point stubbornly before shoving the bowl back towards him. He chuckles, the sound making your ears snap towards him, curled tail shaking a little bit, like it wants to wag but can't quite get over the fear to do so. "Good girl." he praises without thinking, barely snapping his hand back from almost petting your head out of instinct. He clears his throat.

Does he think you're weird now?

"Alright imma be out of your hair now." he says, before leaving you be, walking back towards the workers.

"Do you know her?" Hana asks, another worker just as curious as she seems to be standing next to her.

"No?" Jungkook says, suspicious of them as he raises an eyebrow, putting the bowl down to be washed after throwing your leftovers in the trash. "Why?" he wonders before Hana looks your way.

"Because that's the first time I've ever seen her tail wag."

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[thecountoflondonfansite]

Henry felt devastated for his oldest friend. "That's absolutely horrible. I can't possibly imagine what Robert is going through. Even though he had issues with his father, this would no doubt affect him greatly.” His heart ached for Robert. Having lost his father due to a murder. Who could've done that? Was it the same person who attempted to kill Mr. Danvers Carew with the fire which Hyde got framed for? “You said it seemed personal. Why do you say that, old friend?” The lawyer took a moment to answer. “The murder was grisly and there wasn't anything stolen from the crime scene. It sounded more than just a robbery gone wrong. If it was truly that, expensive items would've been missing yet it all remained. I'm honestly shocked that Robert never told you. You two were always so close. Practically inseparable from college.” Henry looked visibly uncomfortable and solemn due to what his friend had said. “Thank you for telling me this. I do hope Robert will tell me about this on his own time. I won't force him or rush him.” Gabriel nodded at that. “Are you going to tell him?” The teacher seemed hesitant to answer that. “I will, once he has his own problems sorted. I would rather not add onto his problems with my own.” While it was true, Henry also didn't want to make things more complicated for Robert. He knew that his best friend had HJ7 and possibly could have ingested it. Leading to his own soul being split. It would only stress him out which could lead to his possible version of Hyde to get better control over him. It would only serve as ammo Robert's counterpart could use against him. “That is quite understandable. You two have been through a lot. Also considering the incident with your former employee. Mr. Hyde. It's been so stressful for both of you.” Hyde felt nervous whenever Gabriel would mention him. It felt like he could so easily uncover who he truly was to Henry. It was why he never appeared around him either. It's not that they didn't trust him. Not at all. As crazy as Hyde thought he was, he didn't want to possibly lose a friend he technically never met. He actually liked Gabriel and knew that the lies Henry kept would hurt the man deeply. It was a shared fear between Henry and Edward. “Thank you for understanding that, Gabriel. Also thank you for helping me.” Gabriel offered him a warm smile. “Of course. I would do anything for my dearest friends.” It troubled Henry. Why didn't Robert say anything about his father? Yet again, Robert did keep it a secret that he had a vial of HJ7 too. Becky looked confused, she had known about the murder of Dr. Lanyons father before he did. She was sure he would've known. Before the young girl could think about it further, she heard a voice calling for her. It was her uncle's voice. She listened to him calling, luckily Gabriel was too occupied with Henry to notice that. She went over to her father and tugged at his sleeve. Making Dr.Two-Brains lean over so she could whisper into his ear. “Dad, Uncle Alan is calling me. It sounds really urgent, I'll be back as soon as possible.” The mad scientist seemed reluctant to let her leave but nodded. “Alright, please don't take too long. Be careful.” With that said, Becky left. The moment she was alone, checking to make sure it was safe, Becky transformed and flew straight to Alan's and Hugh's apartment. She wondered why he called for her instead of going there himself. It must've been something serious. When she arrived, Becky went to the apartment she knew they resided in. Giving the door a couple of knocks before it was answered by Alan. Behind him were the other three of the four. “Uncle Alan? What are the others doing here?” His expression remained stoic. “We wanted to tell you something. We need you to tell your dad to turn his phone on. We have urgent information to tell him. Something has happened. We need to tell him what as well as the information we gained from it.”

Becky looked alarmed at what her uncle had just said. "Does it have something to do with Dr. Barriton?" Becky inquired as she remembered her dad telling her about the blonde scientist. Becky never really met him since the guy was fired when she was a baby. Her dad did describe him as an absolute narcissus and prick who was Athena's cousin. Becky didn't hold it against anyone to be related to that psycho woman since her twin brother Eris was a good person. She held the man's character and lack of morals against him. Alan shook his head. "No, it wasn't Calvin. Have you heard any of the adults speak of a Lucian Bennett?" Alan asked his niece. Becky pondered the question a bit and shook her head. "Not really, no." She answered. "Who is he?" The four looked at each other, not really sure how to explain. Hugh decided to speak about the man and his encounter to a degree. "We are not entirely sure who Lucian is as a person, but we know he is like Edward Hyde. By that, I mean he is the counterpart of someone who took the HJ7 formula." Becky's eyes widened at Hugh's explanation. There was someone out there who had their own Mr. Hyde! "Does Dr. Jekyll know about Lucian?" Becky asked in an urgent tone. The others gave a nod. "Yeah, he is aware of Lucian. He is also aware of the man having his own variation of the HJ7 formula though he isn't entirely sure how it is possible." Jenkins explained. "Listen, Becky. We really need to get in touch with your dad. It's difficult to explain but Lucian had nearly gotten physical with Hugh. We need to tell your dad what we know and what happened. Alan couldn't fly to Henry's house since it would have caused some alarm and we know the others are still recovering from Athena's attack. That is why he contacted you." Patricia explained in a serious tone. Becky nodded as she understood the gravity of the situation. "Okay, I'll get my dad." The heroine then took off back to Dr. Jekyll's apartment. "Where did your daughter run off too?" Gabriel asked. "Oh, she remembered she had to go outside and call her uncle Alan and let him know she couldn't spend the night at his and Hugh's home this Friday since personal things came up." Dr Two Brains quickly explained. Utterson looked surprised at the response. "She had to take her phone call outside." The lawyer exclaimed with a slightly suspicious tone. Two Brains internally panicked. 'Why can't this guy be as dumb as the rest of the civilians in this city.' "Oh well it was special bonding family thing they had this weekend though Becky is no longer feeling up to it. She and her uncle Alan have unique traditions that are not meant for other ears to hear. It shouldn't take to long for Becky to speak with Alan." Two Brains exclaimed. Henry seemed to catch onto the hidden meaning of his boyfriends' words and decided to help cover for him. "It's a strange but endearing characteristic that my boyfriend's family has. They like to keep their personal businesses private, even if it is just regular, family matters." Henry added. Gabriel looked a bit confused but quickly shook it off for now. "If you say so, Henry." He then turned to Dr. Two Brains. "So your brother is dating Dr. Mann?" Gabriel asked Two Brains shook his head. "No, Alan is dating Hugh, but he isn't my brother. He is technically my brother-in-law. He is Becky's mom's sibling." The mad scientist corrected. In what seemed to be a short amount of time, Becky returned inside. "Hey, kiddo. How did your talk with Uncle Alan go on the phone?" Dr. Two Brains inquired. Becky greeted her dad with a smile but Two Brains and Henry could tell that it was faked. "It went well, but he wanted me to let you know to turn on your phone. Hugh and the other four have been trying to reach you and see how you were doing." Becky respond. Two Brains looked embarrassed and quickly pulled out his phone to turn it on. His eyes widened as he saw the missed calls. "Oops. Sorry. I turned my phone off because I was having a conversation with Henry and didn't want to be disturbed." Two Brains exclaimed. @unhingedexperimenter

[enquire]

Kismet

I imagine anyone following this series could probably guess who I was doing next. Yep, it's Utsuro. This one was kind of interesting. I'm not super sure about the markings (they might be a little too complex? still thinking about it) and his hair was a pain to translate into pony form for me. No clue why he gave me more trouble, but I might end up changing that aspect later because it still feels a little off to me. Also, the markings are sort of part of his cutie mark, kind of like how Luna's is. I kinda wanted to give the vibe of his cutie mark being invasive/changing him. Like his coat has been symbolically tainted or burned from it. He always had some spots and freckles, but after he got his mark, the darker markings + patches/shadows over his flanks and legs appeared.

Anyway, let's get into things...

Kismet was an ordinary earth pony who lived with his family somewhere in Equestria. Like most ponies, he was excited to get his cutie mark, and curious about what it would be.

When an oddly foreboding black mark appeared on his flank one day, strangely accompanied by several new markings, at first, Kismet was just as overjoyed as any former blank flank would be.

However, as time passed, it became clear that Kismet's cutie mark was unique, to say the least. Because no matter what kind of trouble came his way, somehow, it would pass him by completely unharmed.

Good fortune and success followed him wherever he went. Kismet prevailed whenever he attempted anything, and those closet to him were often granted the same blessings.

Soon, everypony wanted to have Kismet around. In the beginning, Kismet was happy to suddenly have so many friends. But eventually, he began to realize that nopony wanted his companionship because they cared about him or enjoyed spending time together.

When a team wanted to win an important game of hoofball, they invited him. When his town's mayoral election came around, the two candidates fought for his support. And the few friends and family Kismet had cared about slowly began to treat him differently.

It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that Kismet came to see the mark as a curse. Once he realized the fortune tied to him was the root problem, he tried everything he could think of in order to make it stop. But no amount of bad luck charms or attempts to control it himself affected the endless good luck.

In the end, Kismet gave up entirely. He left his hometown behind, and started covering up his cutie mark and going by various aliases during his travels. (His current being "Sunset Shores," and using a cutie mark belonging to somepony too distant from him to have the identity theft be an issue)

He tried a few times during this period to start new lives for himself. But inevitably, his good luck would start affecting things around him and the ponies he had met. And in the end, the connection would be made between the two, and Kismet would quietly vanish.

Being alone was somehow more tolerable than being lonely while surrounded by others. So Kismet simply drifted from place to place, not making connections, and never allowing anyone to really get to know him.

On a few instances, his path led him to several other outcasts. Ponies who had nothing, were failures, or had nopony to trust or rely on. Kismet couldn't help but see himself in them. And the ways in which his fortune changed those ponies' fates were some of the only times Kismet ever felt anything positive about his mark.

Though after the connection was made, and things began to deteriorate, Kismet would disappear again. The gratitude and reverence was overwhelming. That being said, he never regretted them, and eventually, he came to realize that somewhere along the way, one pony whose path had crossed his was different. There was one pony who he had helped, who had seen what he was, and yet still saw him before any of the rest.

Perhaps that is why she, and she alone, was able to find him again. After traveling halfway across Equestria, the two of them met once more. And so, Kismet no longer travels alone.

Also, above are examples of what it looks like when he covers up his original cutie mark.

Right: "Sunset Shores" with Clover Shore's cutie mark. Left: Blank flank version. (he doesn't always bother with replacing it)

Last few notes: Kismet's fortune is probably a little different given the universe and how cutie marks work. It still makes his life miserable but doesn't necessarily completely drag the meaning from everything. At least not quite to the degree divine luck does. Just a *bit* less intense but still a curse.

And there isn't a despair cult, world-ending tragedy, nor any killing games in the works here, so there's that too...

[doberbutts]

i hope this isnt weird to say but i really appreciate your dobeposting, especially about the history & current disposition of the breed. my mom has had dobermans my whole life and it led me to kinda... really dislike them for years, her last three and current youngster all were/are so nervy and quick to bite unprovoked (thankfully the young girl is coming around pretty nicely, no actual aggressive bites, just still learning to take things gently)

anyway, getting to the point, reading you explain about the breed's history, who dobermann actually was & how they were created & what they were originally bred for, and the way unfortunately the temperament has gotten messy due to that mixing of people wanting dobes to be family pet dogs and one-person protection dogs at the same time, or just try to make them into a pet dog they just aren't cut out to be (my mom is very much one of the former lol) really helped me understand and appreciate the breed. my dad has american akitas, and imho they have a similar issue of people trying to breed them for social, cheery pet temperaments which just tends to go very badly for a very large, high aggression, high prey drive, not suited for the average suburbanite breed like them, and realizing dobermans basically have a kind of more severe extent of the same issue (albeit I'm oversimplifying here) really helped me understand them.

i dont think I'd ever choose to have one, but I've definitely got a lot more respect and appreciation from afar.

so, sorry for rambling and probably being repetitive, hope i made some kind of sense, just wanted to say thank you for being a great breed advocate :)

here's a dobe tax, my mom's ~18 month old little girl, kira. she looks like that because, from what the rescue told my mom, she was from a backyard breeder and had to be removed from her first two homes due to mistreatment. still manages to be a real sweetie most of the time

Hey thanks for the compliment and the dog tax!

It really sucks because I think dobermans can be fantastic pet dogs... to people who want a doberman and all that entails. But a lot of people in the outcross groups I'm griping about want something more like a gun dog or a retriever in a doberman costume, and it's very frustrating to explain again and again that that simply is not what a doberman is.

I'd be all for a doberman outcross that actually respects what a doberman is for! The problem is that there have been very few of those, and most of them started with junk and ended up fairly lackluster in what they produced because you can't shine a turd and call it gold.

Dobermans don't have to be nervy, loose cannon, fear aggressive, bite risk demons. My doberman is not! My doberman before him was scared, but that was largely a socialization problem caused by living 2 years of her life exclusively in a box, and she wasn't dangerous, she just shut down and shivered. My doberman before her wasn't like this. And my doberman before him was, but again with the known abuse in his background from being a court case dog it's likely that he didn't start out that way and didn't need to become that.

It is possible to have a doberman that is actually a really fun dog to have and be around. You just. Have to understand that they are a doberman. My best friend @khayr has a doberman that's a pet, that does not do any sort of protection work. Her dog is very safe to be around! She's a lovely creature and I think well matched to my buddy's needs. But! She's also a doberman! That means she doesn't like the mailman or the UPS drivers! It means when missionaries knock on her door, her dog throws a fit! It means when she's out late at night and someone rapidly approaches her, her dog puts herself between her and the oncoming stranger! Because she's a doberman! She's supposed to do that!

[gamesception]

Sception Reads Cass Cain #32

Batgirl (2000) #14 writer: Puckett pencils: Scott

Different inker this time, John Lowe instead of Campanella. I'm not enough of a connoisseur of comic art to really notice the difference. Honestly, I've been favoring pencil art in this series in general and not really mentioning inker & colorist. Should I be crediting/calling those out specifically? Let me know.

Anyway, we're back to the main series. Last time Cass was riding high after saving a repentant assassin from government agents. It fit more or less right in with the sort of one shot story we've seen a few times in her series, so there really wasn't a reason to expect any follow up from it, though the tone was a notable break from the usual Batgirl benchmark somewhere between sombre and miserable. This time is a return to form.

Before we get into the issue, that note about the tone does tie into that DCWomenKickingAss post that's been making the rounds again recently (link), the one with the interview with Scott Peterson where he describes the original instructions he gave to Kelley Puckett for designing the new batgirl as:

“Hey, new Batgirl. Young–late teens, I think–and Asian. And cheerful and chipper and always up and good natured and she has a complete and total death wish.”

As much as the Cass we got ended up being my favorite comic character ever, it's unfortunate that the 'cheerful, chipper' aspect - which is definitely there in the character, I've talked in previous posts about how much she loves being Batgirl and how critical that is to her character and to the overall themes of the book - is rarely the dominant tone of her ongoing. The quote from Puckett above implies book that on the surface is bright and cheerful, with a subversive undercurrent that fades into the background only to rear up and slap you in the face unexpectedly, where as what we got is an unrelenting 'long darkness of the soul' situation, punctuated by brief flashes of light that more often than not turn out to be the headlights of an oncoming train.

Which brings us back to the current issue.

We start with some government suits watching video of Cass and debating whether she's a metahuman or not, before being surprised by the fact that they have no matching info for her. Still pretty fun and lighthearted, but it does establish the idea that these guys are going to be a problem.

we also re-do the goodbye scene from the end of last issue...

Only this this time Puckett adds this bit where the assassin realizes he'll never get to see his family again, dampening the mood, setting up for what happens to him later, but also putting this divide between himself and Cass. Last time this guy could be read as a sort of self-surrogate for her, someone parallel to her situation as a former assassin, and by saving him Cass was sort of getting the chance to save herself.

Here, though, the guy establishes himself, however briefly, as his own person, with a life and a family. All the things that Cass's unique history and circumstances have denied her.

Things that Barbara is extremely concerned that Cass may have permanently cut herself off from ever having in the future by letting herself be recorded by the government outside of costume.

Cass, of course, can't imagine a future for herself. Because she's going to die within the year when Shiva returns. And because she doesn't want to be anything other than Batgirl. But mostly because deep down she doesn't believe she deserves a life or a future, and doesn't want to think about why that is.

As it is, Cass doesn't think she has any connections, so isn't afraid of losing them.

Bab's dialog implies that she's going to go to Bruce about this thinking maybe he could get through to her, but Bruce, consciously or otherwise, has been actively isolating Cass, so can he really be counted on to prevent her from isolating herself even further?

There's this transition page where Cass wakes up to find Bruce instead of Oracle in the Tower. I don't talk about color much, but Jason Wright does a good job here, the colors not just conveying a transition to night but also the switch to a darker emotional and narrative tone, despite still being all smiles, not knowing what happened.

Just like John way back in issue two, we have another guy who Cass thought she had saved, and let herself feel happy about, only to find out that the villains had come back for them later. And once again it's a pretty gut wrenching twist.

Cass asks Bruce's permission to hurt these people, not just take them down and capture them, but to personally punish them, and he grants it, which is a pretty gross dynamic all round.

Remember this bit from issue 4, when Bruce is talking about how 'perfect' Batgirl was?

Better even than himself, not just as a matter of skill, but more importantly for how she was untainted by any excess cruelty. It's why he was so shocked to find out she might have killed someone, despite knowing Cain had trained her from birth to do just that. It wasn't something that the Cassandra the he knew was capable of. But a few short months working for Batman and...

This isn't 'gentle'. This isn't someone you'd be shocked to find out had killed someone.

Remember this bit from issue 4? Bruce all high and mighty about what David Cain did to Cass. But for all the painful and potentially lethal extremes of his training regimen, and for all the evil he intended her to do, David raised a girl who, once she understood what killing was, chose to abandon her life and her father - despite loving both - rather than kill again.

A few months exposure to Bruce is eroding away the humanity and compassion that compelled her to seek atonement in the first place.

Bruce, his methods, the way he treats his friends and family, he's actively making Cassandra worse.

On the way home Bruce says he's sorry, but it's about what happened to the assassin, he's not sorry for what he's doing to Cassandra himself, what he's taking from her. He's not even done taking things from her this issue, as he doesn't take her back to the clocktower.

Of course. Of course he's fine with throwing away even the possibility of a future independent of him and his mission. You can just imagine how the conversation with Babs went too, at first trying to appeal on Cass's behalf, Bruce just not getting it, switching to practical threats to the mission, how Cass's exposure potentially exposes Oracle, in the hope that he'll respond to that - only for Bruce to respond by taking Cass away entirely, severing the one lonely link to someone who at least tries to care about her as a person in her own right.

When Babs was trying to appeal to Cass earlier, she brushed her off, convinced that she didn't have anything to lose anyway. You can feel the realization dawning on her that yeah, she really did have something to lose.

And the issue ends with this panel that makes her tiny to emphasize how completely isolated she is now.

This issue is a major emotional low point in Cass's early series, maybe *the* major low point. Bruce at his worst, Cass at her most alone.

Things will slowly improve from here, though sadly never in quite the way they needed to, with a direct confrontation of Bruce himself.

[superman86to99]

Super Titles Round-Up (August 1994)

This month: Superboy gets wet! Steel gets a new armor! The Eradicator gets sad!

Superboy #7

"Worlds Collide" continues, but pretty soon it's gonna be more like "Waves Collide" because of the two tsunamis about to hit the inter-dimensionally connected cities of Metropolis and Dakota. While Superman and the Blood Syndicate team up to stop the wave on the Metropolis side, Superboy, Static, and Rocket try to do the same in the Dakota one, but none of their powers are really suited for stopping massive amounts of city-destroying water.

(At least we get some excellent sound effects out of their failed attempts.)

In Metropolis, the Blood Syndicate's Aquamaria (whose powers, as the name implies, are "being made out of water" and "Spanish") turns into a smaller tsunami herself to try to counteract the wave. Meanwhile, Superboy and his Amazing Friends decide to change strategy and try to fool the god-like being causing all of this, Rift ("the world's most powerful disgruntled postal worker," as Superboy calls him), into stopping the wave. Instead, they anger him so much that he turns both tsunamis into a wave of fire -- just as Aquamaria was about to crash into it. RIP, Aquamaria (or "Steamaria" now, I guess).

In Dakota, Rift does end up turning the wave back into water and freezing it in time, just to show off. Superboy, Static, and Rocket manage to work together to knock Rift down, but he easily gets up again and freezes them too by trapping them inside a giant headstone. They'll stay stuck there until breaking out in Man of Steel #36, which leads to...

Steel #7

Sorry, this isn't the issue where we find out why Steel was wearing nothing but boxers in MoS #36 (you'll have to wait for the "Milestone Side" post for that). What's important is that Steel is working with his former rival Hardware and current enemy Hazard on a plan to stop their even bigger common enemy Rift. Part of that plan involves getting himself a new armor with Hardware's tech, hence him not being in his undies anymore. Other than that, the plan doesn't seem to be going too well, considering Rift carelessly squashes Metropolis and Dakota together into one city on the second page.

Rift announces that now that he's merged the cities, he's gonna sort out the "continuity problems" by getting rid of all the redundant elements, like the two evil labs/sleep clinics where he was experimented on when he was a regular mailman. The heroes don't want Rift to destroy the lab because it contains the weapon Steel and Hardware created to depower him, so they join forces to distract him while Superman, Icon, and Hazard go retrieve the anti-Rift device.

By the way, while all the heroes fight Rift, there's a coloring error that suddenly turns Rocket into Superboy -- further evidence that Superboy's Milestone Universe counterpart is a pregnant girl.

Superman and Icon get the weapon out right before Rift remembers what he was doing and destroys the labs and everyone in them --including Hazard, apparently, which leaves Steel with some conflicted emotions. The guy seemingly died saving two worlds, sure, but he did also try to kill most of Steel's family. Rift teleports away at the end of the issue (he's gonna go mess with the Blood Syndicate in their own series) and the heroes fly off to see what they can do with that weapon. TO BE CONCLUDED IN ANOTHER POST! Here's some cool Humberto Ramos art to tide you over until then:

Outsiders #10

After helping the Outsiders break out of jail, the Eradicator joins them on a trip to "the underworld nation of Abyssia" to look for their teammate Looker, who has been turned into a vampire by the Dracula wannabe ruling that place. While down there, everyone suddenly starts experiencing visions related to tragic moments in their lives. In the Eradicator's case, he remembers he had two kids as Dr. David Connors and sees them calling him a freak.

Did that really happen? Because that's grounds for getting disowned, young men (though I guess they're getting their inheritance anyway since everyone thinks Dr. Dave is already dead). Anyway, you might think the vampire lord is causing these visions, but nope, he's getting them too and no one has any idea what's going on. The Outsiders find Looker, who betrays them, but then it turns out she was only pretending to betray them... and then it turns out she was only pretending to be pretending to betray them. So, yeah, she's evil. CONTINUED!

The Spectre #21

Superman is part of a truly random assortment of DC characters appearing in this issue, including most of the Justice Society, Lucien from Sandman, Nightshade from Suicide Squad, and Naiad from Firestorm (who, coincidentally, is also a lady made of water, like Aquamaria). Oh, and Adolf Hitler and Bill Clinton appear too. Jesus, who isn't in this issue? Not Jesus, he's also in here. Seriously!

President Clinton has tasked a guy named Professor Hazzard (another coincidence! Worlds ARE Colliding!) with finding a way to kill the Spectre if that ever becomes necessary. Hazzard travels into the Dreaming (read: takes a nap) and, with Lucien's help, learns about the Spear of Destiny: a spear that once struck Jesus, which eventually ended up in Hitler's hands and was used to keep all of the Justice Society, including the Spectre, out of Germany during World War II.

The Spear is now in a Raiders of the Lost Ark-esque warehouse, but Clinton orders they take it out once he learns that the Spectre has apparently flooded part of Tokyo and killed hundreds of people. Of course, that wasn't the Spectre, it was Naiad the Water Elemental, who went crazy and decided to kill everyone working in the Japanese oil company that caused the incident that gave her her powers. But Clinton doesn't know that, so he needs someone to wield the Spear and use it against the Spectre. Guess who he drafts for the job?

But that's not gonna happen until next issue. CONTINUED, TOO!

Legionnaires #17 and Valor #22

I wanna mention these issues since they make reference to the Pocket Earth Superboy, even though his role in the Legion of Super-Heroes' origin had been erased some years earlier (at this point, Valor was the young hero who inspired the Legion, not Superboy). The Legion's continuity is a complete mess, which is nothing new, but suddenly they're aware of it and that's causing troubles. For once, the Legionnaires are as baffled as the readers.

In fact, it's such a mess that their entire world is falling apart and they start looking for a new one to settle on. That's when one of them remembers there's an empty planet just sitting there: Superboy and Supergirl's Pocket Earth, which has been deserted since Superman killed its last three non-synthetic inhabitants in Superman #22. The plan is to literally haul the planet out of the Pocket Universe and put it where the old Earth used to be. Easy! The only problem is that once they bring the Pocket Earth over to the non-Pocket DC Universe, its core inverts or whatever and it turns into a time bomb. Whoops! ALSO TO BE CONTINUED, BELIEVE IT OR NOT!

Showcase '94 #9

The Dan Jurgens-written Waverider/Monarch story that started last issue concludes here (finally, something without a "CONTINUED" at the end). Monarch, who was always a bit of a knucklehead when he was a superhero called Hawk, has somehow invented a device that captured Waverider and his fellow Linear Man, Hunter, and forced them to ping-pong through time. Waverider finally breaks free and attacks Monarch -- but that was all part of his plan.

Monarch uses Waverider's chronal energy to look into his own past and find out why he's so smart now: it's because when he killed his former partner Dove at the end of Armageddon 2001, her "powers, reason and intelligence" merged into Hawk's dumb meathead body and turned him into a superior being. This warrants a name (and costume) change, so from now on, he's calling himself "Extant."

Extant dies fighting Waverider and Hunter... or that's what should have happened according to Hunter's temporal research. Instead, Extant completely owns both of them and steals Waverider's time-traveling wrist-cuff, which means he now has the powers and smarts to change history as he pleases. This also means I LIED! TO BE CONTINUED IN ZERO HOUR! 0:

Missed an issue? Looking for an old storyline? Check out our new chronological issue index!

[archduchessofnowhere]

I’m seeing your rewatching posts of Die Kaiserin and after you fully rewatch I would honestly love to hear a rant comparison of how inaccurate the show is compared to real life. Like I’m seriously invested

Hi! Honestly if I make a "side by side" comparison of all the inaccuracies this answer would be 20k words long jgkglj. I feel that sometimes I come off as too obnoxious pointing out every little inaccuracy so I tried to do that a little less in this rewatch, and instead focused on which I believe are the biggest issues.

Personally, I think the problem with Die Kaiserin's inaccuracies is that they betray a completely lack of understanding of the history and the people they are adapting. It's not just that they changed dates or that they aged up characters or that the women wear corsets on their bare skin (all things that bother me too); is that the characters are so different to their historical counterparts that they are practically unrecognizable. Just to list a few of the crimes of this series' characterizations:

Elisabeth is no longer an introverted and sensitive teen girl who suddenly becomes empress and can't adapt to her new role, she's an outspoken, defiant young woman (her age in never mentioned but Devrim Lingnau just can't pass as a fifteen years old) who is more compassionate and clever and better than every single other woman in this series. She is just so Different and Not Like The Other Girls!

Franz Josef is a weak willed ruler who is easily manipulated by his mother and is apparently uncapable of assert his authority. Nevermind that the real FJ ruled as an absolute monarch since he was 18, and never allowed anyone near him to have too much influence.

Archduke Maximilian, FJ's liberal, romantic brother is turned into a womanizer bad boy who wants to steal his brother's throne and wife. Since he has no political leanings to speak of in this series, it's not really clear why he even wants to be emperor, funsies?

Archduchess Sophie was always going to get the short end of the stick, as the idea that she was a mother-in-law from hell is very prevalent in fiction and nonfiction. But this show takes it to a new level: she isn't an strict mother-in-law, she's cartoonishly evil. She orders executions and arrests (withouth his son's consent!), she threatens to lockdown Elisabeth forever if she doesn't agree to divorce FJ! She disdains her sons and calls them weak! (nevermind that the real Sophie adored all her children)

And I could go on with the rest of the supporting characters, but my point is: I don't know who these people are, they resemble their historical counterparts in name only.

And I guess I could forgive that if the series was at least an entretaining court drama, but honestly I just think that on top of being inaccurate, it is very dull as well. There's a whole episode set at a wedding party, and if well done I like this sort of "real time" episodes, but in this case I was terribly bored because nothing of note happened (oh no Elisabeth saw FJ's former mistress among the guests! She will now walk around asking people if they know who the woman is for the next thirty minutes). In fact the pacing is so bad that season 1 may take place in the span of three months for all we know.

Also practically all the conflicts this season are fictional too: Elisabeth not getting pregnant (false, she became pregnant two months after her wedding at most), Max planning a coup on his brother (false, Max loved his brother and would never do something against him), FJ wanting to build a rail but the evil conservative ministers being against it because they want to go to war (false, there wasn't opposition to industrialization - Austria's neutrality in the Crimean war had nothing to do with that), and so on.

Ultimately I think that if you know nothing (but like, absolutely nothing) of the real history you may enjoy this show as a soap opera (because the fictional love triangle gets a lot of screentime), because Die Kaiserin is really not the serious period drama it seems to believe it is.

[jkcorellia]

There are two issues that vex me about combat-focused TTRPGs, the avoidance of both of which at the same time is a priority for the one I'm writing:

"the only hit point that matters is the last one"

the Death Spiral

In the former scenario (for which DnD, at least its fifth edition, is the poster child), characters have a number of hit points, and as enemy attacks chip away at them, nothing happens. As long as they have 1+ HP, they are just as effective as if they had 100% of their HP. For folks interested in a more simulationist, verisimilitudinous (say that out loud, it's fun) experience, this can feel unsatisfying.

In the latter scenario, the closer a character is to death, the less effective they get. As anyone who has ever been sick or injured or tired or burnt out can attest, that is indeed how it works. The problem, of course, especially for games purporting a "heroic" mode of play, is that it can be very frustrating for your powerful Lvl 12 BloodMeister to suddenly be unable to land a blow as 37 NightGoblins pepper away at him with shortbows. Or whatever. In cases where the Death Spiral doesn't match the game's Vibe (and if it does match the Vibe, I'm not talking about your game and it's perfect and carry on), the "realism" can stand in the way of fun. Which is like...a capital crime I'm pretty sure.

The problem I'm finding is that these two pitfalls are at odds in a way where it seems really easy to fall into the one while avoiding the other, or vice versa. The theory I'm currently trying to test is threading the needle by making characters less accurate while giving them damage buffs as their HP falls under 50%, then furthermore under 25% - sort of a wounded animal approach.

I'm neither sure this will be effective nor that it will be enough, but the fun thing about a slowly moving personal project with no deadlines or backers or collaborators is that I can just sit with it for a while and tweak it one million times, so at least there's that.

Definitely open to thoughts here - using HP (as opposed to wound thresholds or other indicators of character health) is not set in stone, but I'm not sure simply changing the health system alone could avoid this particular tightrope. I'm certainly open to thoughts on the matter though.

[mariacallous]

In Washington DC, I measure out my life in polls and heart palpitations. The polls are relentless, nail-biting, maddeningly contradictory. There are national polls, swing state polls, polls from tiny counties that predict a whole election, partisan polls designed to demoralise the other side.

There are polls on whether a candidate inspires confidence, compassion, leadership. I’ve noticed how, after a bad poll, I start looking for another that tells me numbers I like. I’ve also noticed how, after a good one, I will look for a bad poll to bring me down, as if I’m trying to prick the balloon of self-confidence and remind myself of “reality”.

But the polls never do quite take you to reality. Instead, they shape it. It’s not just what the polls are saying, or even how they were put together, that’s the great problem here – it’s how the obsessive focus on polls is symptomatic of how we view politics.

Polls make politics feel like a race, a game, a sport of feuding personalities. Who’s up? Who’s down? What tactics have they used to get one over on each other? What does it say about their personality? Words are seen as weapons with which politicians show off their ability to subvert or scare the opposition – not as substantive statements about what they intend to do.

And what sort of politician will thrive in this world where political speech is just a game? A candidate such as Donald Trump.

It was the communications professors Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph Cappella who first noticed the connection between describing politics as a series of strategies and a growing cynicism among voters.

This was back in the mid-1990s, when the media was constantly analysing the rivalry between US president Bill Clinton and speaker of the house Newt Gingrich, the early iteration of today’s identity-based partisanship. Jamieson and Cappella found the media was focusing less on the issues the two were debating – often around health reform – and more on how they were competing.

The coverage fixated on who was winning, utilised the language of games and war, emphasised the performance and perception of politicians, put a new weight on polls.

This sort of coverage activated people’s cynicism about politics – the sense that it’s just a game between self-serving schemers – and then made them more cynical about the media.

Decades later, this “spiral of cynicism” is all around us: from the exploding popcorn of polls to the headlines. After Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly compared him to a fascist last week, the Wall Street Journal wrote: “Harris uses ex-Trump chief of staff’s remarks to paint him as unfit for office”.

The question of whether Trump is a fascist or not was reduced to highlighting a rhetorical tactic. The idea that all politics is just a cynical game, and that the “mainstream media” is not really looking out for the cares of the voter, has become so pervasive it has helped pave the way for politicians who stand on sweeping away the whole edifice of democracy as we know it.

It’s no coincidence that this turn began in the 1990s, when the cold war had finished and the big philosophical debates about policy seemed to be over. Instead, politics became about entertaining performance – the era of Blair, Clinton, Zhirinovsky, Yeltsin. And the media began overgenerating coverage that replaced ideological debate with personality and tactics.

The 1990s were also when the reality show emerged as the dominant entertainment format. It initially grew out of observational documentaries seeking to understand society better by ceaselessly filming ordinary people in their homes in such a way that they would forget about the cameras and be more themselves.

It quickly became the opposite: a circus where all behaviour was for the cameras. Contestants learned to say and do the most vile things just to engineer scandal and generate attention for themselves.

American political TV debates started to imitate the same logic. In a busy primary debate, candidates only get a little sliver of airtime. The way to get more is to attack another candidate in the meanest and most personal way possible, and thus provoke them to attack you back. If you are attacked, then you are allowed more time to respond.

So you quickly got debates where supremely clever candidates sling personal abuse at each other to get more attention. The debate stage was set for reality show host Trump.

The design of most social media has followed the same incentives: rewarding taking the most extreme and often nasty statements to generate attention. And Trump has flourished on that as well.

The 1990s is when World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) boomed, with its cabaret wrestlers pulling obviously fake fighting moves, where violence is theatre. Trump was always an aficionado of WWE, even taking part in mock fights, and a member of its hall of fame.

This year the 1990s wrestling star Hulk Hogan spoke at the Republican National Convention; Trump enters his own rallies to the theme tune of the Undertaker, who, at the height of WWE, was the “evil” foil to Hogan’s all-American “goodie”. Many of Trump’s followers apply the cultural logic of WWE to his statements. Sure, the argument goes, Trump might say some very authoritarian-sounding things – but it’s just a game.

So can we ever find a way back to reality? To issues rather than strategies? We can, and we can even use polling to do so. When pollsters recently gave voters a choice of policies, rather than personalities, to choose from in this election, the majority, including Trump supporters, preferred Kamala Harris’s.

Partisan polarisation dissolves when we change how we cover politics. We can also develop different TV political debates, which preserve the excitement of competition but repurpose them to reward collaboration instead of abuse.

Imagine a debate format where candidates had to solve a real policy problem, and show how they would work with each other and with the opposition party to achieve it. We could also scale social media platforms that algorithmically detect the commonalities in political disagreements to generate common policy solutions. Such platforms are already being used in Taiwan.

Of course, there’s appeal in fleeing from reality to the grotesque circus of politics. But if we can’t face facts, others will force us. This month, at the Wilson Center in DC, Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute and Sam Cranny-Evans of the Open Source Centre presented a chilling analysis of Russian weapons manufacturing and supply chains.

The slideshow featured satellite photos of munitions factories where freshly cleared tracts of land are being readied to produce more weapons. Vladimir Putin is preparing for a vast war. China’s arms production is on a wartime footing. They are not playing.

[felassan]

An interview video with Mark Darrah called "An Interview With Mark Darrah - Creativity, BioWare, and the Industry!": [source and watch link]

Video description: "I was fortunate enough to speak with Mark Darrah, former BioWare vetran, about his time at BioWare, his success, his challenges, and the role of video games in the art world. Thank you again for this chance, Mark!"

Some notes from it under the cut:

There was a question around the topic of games today taking a longer time to come out, getting restarted/rebooted along the way, ideas being scrapped, constant iteration etc. It was asked whether this is unique to BioWare or is it a common issue in the industry more generally. Mark: “So, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf had some particular things involved, some of which are externalities coming from EA, but yeah, video game development, the complexity has been going up exponentially. Games these days, and not just BioWare – five years is probably a good average for games coming out now. That was not the case even five, six years ago. Things have gotten incredibly expensive and much slower.

DA:O was originally conceived as being a spiritual successor to BG. It was a lot of different parts being developed unfortunately independently of each other, and then basically being glued together into something. For example, the darkspawn in DA:O as a faction don’t have very good or sensical visual coherency (they don’t really make sense as a group of things caused by the same thing). Since then there has been a lot more care taken towards the DA IP and making sure it at least has rules that it doesn’t violate, or ones it violates on purpose as opposed to accidentally. The IP has some strong core ideas about characters first (though it wasn’t always saying this out loud), people, power comes at a cost, everyone thinks they are the hero of their own story, etc. Those sorts of things inform most of its development more than anything. You should in most cases be able to look at the villain of the game and go, oh yeah, I get what they’re going for. (In DA:O this is Loghain). “Like, ‘yeah, I get it, I might even agree with you, but I’m not going to let you destroy the world because of what you believe."

EA, like most public companies, is reluctant to spend money to various degrees because the more they spend, the worse it makes their profitability look. One of the reasons why BioWare ended up being bought in the first place was because they had basically run out of money. They ran out of money in the pursuit of quality ahead of everything. But the problem with this strategy is that, if quality is ahead of everything then you’re probably going out of business. On the flipside, in a big public company you often have the opposite problem arising, where it’s profitability ahead of everything. This results in constraints and more constraints on people, and also in more pressure to do more profitable features that might not be quality features. Microtransactions and other monetization models that have arisen in games more recently are sometimes attempted to be rationalized as ‘for the player’, but they’re really money-making features. If you’re putting quality first you’re probably not putting those kinds of features in. If you’re putting money first, then you probably are.

Horses exist in DA:I because at the time it was being made in, a fantasy RPG needed to have horses in it (a ‘table stakes feature’; a feature that needs to be in the game just for it even to have a seat at the table, otherwise people aren’t going to take it seriously). Open world in DA:I was similar. Unfortunately, with open world it needs to be an A or B feature in terms of quality, not a C feature, in order to be good enough for the player. With horses, you do them (at that time) because you have to. With open world, it takes over your entire game unfortunately and modifies the structure of the game as a whole.

Collaboration at BioWare got better over time as the culture matured but also as the structure and systems matured. BG1 had a team of around 65 people, a size which is pretty easy to collaborate at. On DAI the team was well above 400 people when outsourcers are included in the figure. That team size is much bigger, to the point that it wasn't possible to interact with everyone on the team. In the early days of BioWare, disciplines like design and art were considered to be very separate things that didn’t need to interact with each other very much. By the time Mark was leading at BioWare, this had really changed - teams like design and art were working together much more collaboratively, in order to build a better experience. You see this in the games, the more recent ones now have levels that make more sense for the gameplay (now not designed by one discipline in isolation from the other).

By the time BioWare was bought by EA, EA wasn’t buying ‘not-franchises’. DA:O was envisioned as a standalone game. This is why it has lots of weird bits of lore in it still that are kind of timebombs. They largely moved beyond and patched over these, but there are still lots of weird things in it that aren’t fully taken into account. DA:O should never have been a standalone game, it should have always been envisioned as a franchise of some sort as opposed to being retroactively envisioned as one. “So that was a mistake from the beginning.”

On Frostbite as the engine for DA:I: at the time, the political climate [in EA/BioWare] was such that the options were to keep trying to make the game with Eclipse, which was not practical, or Frostbite. There just wasn’t an appetite for anything other than that. DA:I, out of DA:I, ME:A and Anthem, is actually the game that approached Frostbite correctly. It was then followed by the other two games which didn’t do that. “Frostbite is scapegoated and blamed for a lot of BioWare’s woes. On ME:A and Anthem there’s some truth to that, but a DA:I built on Unreal isn’t a radically different or better game.”

ME1 made the engine mistake of trying to force Unreal to be an Eclipse. This essentially meant that the engine was constantly fighting back against the devs.

If Mark had a time machine, he would make some changes to the Hinterlands in DA:I and shave some of the worst edges off of DAII, like moving that one spot in the repeating caves, having Varric lampshade the repeating caves in dialogue, and making it so that you don’t have to fight Orsino. “Anthem’s launch would require more than a time machine.”

ME:A is at least partially a victim of circumstance. It came out with a few particular bugs in it that it didn’t need to. These bugs had been fixed, they just didn’t make it into the release build. The game then landed on top of Zelda and Horizon Zero Dawn, in a climate that was really paying attention and was very critical.

There was a decision during ME:A development to change its tone to a lighter, younger tone than the tone of the MET. The PC of the MET is a Generation X PC, like someone from action movies in the 80s. The PC of ME:A is more like a PC from action movies in the 2000s. This change in tone was controversial. A lot of the pushback ME:A received was more about this tone change. Mark said that he was against it at the time but that he thinks that ME:A probably made the right decision.

“I’m not convinced that BioWare should have been making Anthem. It was conceived by Casey Hudson as something very different than what launched, some sort’ve multiplayer, storytelling. I don’t believe that those problems were actually truly solved. He left in 2014. Whatever he was imagining wasn’t communicated to the team clearly enough for them to execute on his vision. Anthem was basically Destiny, but it was envisioned before Destiny existed. After 2014 they weren’t really acknowledging that they were making Destiny.”

[source and watch link]

[indelen]

This is my reread of the Lockwood and Co. Books, organized by @blue-boxes-magic-and-tea, I'll make a general summary of several chapters and then post bits and pieces that jumped out at me.

Part III Chapters 13-16:

I like all the worldbuilding in these chapters, which we get subtly as we get introduced to this alternative London and how it functions day to day with The Problem in the background. Little things like fashion for silver and lavender, no computers or any tech past about the 70s, the economy collapsing because work days were so severely reduced, etc. The other thing that’s shown is how many corporations are really making a lot of money from The Problem and that the only changes the government ever enacts are those that are going to be good business for them. There’s a small bit in Chapter 13 about how running water wards off ghosts but only small wealthy areas of London got runnels put it. The rest rely on iron, which is an expensive commodity you have to constantly maintain and purchase more of. Water is free if, in the interest of public good you put the necessary infrastructure in from the start, it pays dividends in the long run. Iron rusts and is harder to upkeep and maintain, but it’s more providable and so magically the government chose to go with the latter and not the former option even through ghost lamps are less effective. I honestly love that this sort of detail is in a book for kids and teens and I like that the author gives this sort of detail to the young audiences. Especially in this day and age I feel like they would appreciate it.

Odds and Ends Side A:

There is significance in Rotwell’s symbol being a lion and Fittes symbol being a unicorn, because those two symbols are also on either side of the quartered shield that makes up the United Kingdom’s coat of arms. In heraldry they are called “supporters”. Irl the lion is the symbol of England and unicorn is a symbol of Scotland and this symbolism was adopted when James IV of Scotland inherited the throne from Elizabeth I in the 16th century and became King James I. So symbolically this shows how the agency system and the personal rivalries of the agency heads ripped the country apart with no real winner. Fittes is bigger. Rothwell is more popular. Fittes has the reputation. Rothwell has the PR. No one really wins. Children continue to die serving both.

And it's so sinister how agencies develop a “brand” and rally the kids they recruit around it. Kids are of course very susceptible to this, children latch easily to tribal behavior, they love that sense of belonging that comes with being in a clique. This is a manipulation tactic. If you make the kids feel special, give them a cool jacket, a symbol, a membership, a sense of belonging to a group, they will Other anyone not part of that group. They become easier to manipulate when you have their membership to hold over them. You can use them to spy on one another, to ostracize those who break ranks. George saw this in Fittes - he didn’t fit in there because the glamour of the Fittes brand didn’t ensnare him, it just made his more curious. So, he was pushed out.

The famous “catch in the voice” that launched a thousand Quillica ships. I’m kind of split about this. Yes, it seems like there is something there - Kipps speaks with a bitterness that seems to transcend regular dislike. You could argue that Kipps really does think Lockwood is dangerous on top of just thinking he’s a shit but this bit always did seem to telegraph a personal side to the animosity that goes beyond simple rivalry. My issue is, if there was something, why was it never was mentioned in later books? Even in moments where it would be suitable for the narrative. I sometimes wonder if this was an orphaned bit of plot, considered but abandoned by the author for one reason or another. Authors decide to edit out plot points all the time and I do wonder if some tie between Kipps and Jessica was considered early on but passed on because it made things a little too complicated.

George casually interrupts here and redirects the ire of a bully onto himself to protect a friend. Really the whole trio can be pretty verbally vicious but book George is by far the most likely to have a go at someone. This is an interesting difference between George Cubbins of the books and George Karim of the show. Karim is a far gentler soul, Cubbins goes for the jugular every time.

It's interesting that the big conflict of the middle of season 1, the infamous “asset” spat that produced so much delicious angst, pining and yearning (not to mention Six of Crows parallels) – does not really exist in the books. Lucy is fine with being seen an asset to the agency. Proud of it even. She doesn’t care about publicity, but she doesn’t mind it either. Her biggest issues later on actually stem from thinking she's being replaced or not being seen as valuable team member. Because in the books it’s made plain that the kids’ minds are so warped by society to view having Talent and being an agent as the best and most valuable thing about themselves. To the point that they often don’t know what to do with themselves if they have any downtime. It’s why the existential crisis of living long enough to lose your Talent comes as such a brutal knock to many. I can see why they added the “asset” drama into the show, it’s one of those small but crucial themes that would have been hard to put on screen. It takes literal books for Lucy to start seeing herself as an individual, to start casually mentioning having hobbies or wishing he had time to pursue certain interests outside of being an agent. In fact, the most times she puffs up her chest and talk about how great and important it is that she is one is in this book. In the later books this bravado recedes. And without getting too into spoiler territory other characters grapple with this as well. It’s a faint throughline, but it’s there. In the show they made her backstory be a catalyst for her realization that agencies use kids and discard them and her issue with simply being considered one “asset” of many in the agency meatgrinder is more pronounced. And I think with making Quill younger and making him go thought the process of losing his Talent on screen and making him Northern (this bit was pointed out by @womaninwinter to me, credit where it’s due) was done intentionally to draw parallels with Lucy and have them share a bond in Season 2 (IF WE GOT ONE NETFILX WHEN I CATCH YOU-). This sort of thing works better on screen. And of course, provides delicious angst since Lockwood would have gotten immediately jealous of any bond Lucy develops with anyone other than him. Not needed in the books, but fun on screen where you can watch Cameron Chapman’s big sad doe eyes track Ruby Stokes around the room like a compass needle besotted with the magnetic north.

The clever and fun thing about bits like this is that on first read you think this is all to do with the immediate plot but it’s actually laying of the ground work and foreshadowing to future books and the appearance of my precious horny sewer rat baby Skull in a jar.

It's really subtle but all the adults who work as first responders, such those who responded to the Sheen Road fire or the cops in Scotland Yard, already have some kind of body armor. Only the kids don’t. Only agents and nightwatch kids don’t. You’re telling me someone couldn’t scale down chainmail and make a lighter version for the kids? Sew some iron or silver thread into those uniforms? Fittes and Rotwell have an enormous amount of resources and pull. And yet they do nothing. Not even a little investment in safety of literal children. It’s all just so grim the more you think about it.

An enormous imposing building of the mighty Scotland Yard mythologized in a million stories and seen in a million tv shows, full of adults carrying important papers and making important decisions, full of adults in body armor … all guarded by two kids with sticks. It’s so vividly pathetic.

Please turn the cassette over to side B (see reblog for more)

[nikatyler]

✈️ 🐷 ❤️ 🤍 🧐 For Sharon

Thank you! This took me ages to figure out for some reason. But here we go!

✈️ AIRPLANE — does your oc like traveling, or do they consider themselves a more homey person?

She has to travel a lot for her athletic competitions. She likes visiting new places but hates the travel part, especially if it's far away and she has to sit in the car or plane or whatever for a long long time. She loves travelling with Tyler but their idea of an ideal vacation is different. While she’d like a more active vacation, going hiking, exploring nature and places, Tyler would rather stay in the city or at the beach and just rest and relax. But hey, they’re good at coming to a compromise that works for them both.

🐷 PIG FACE — what is your oc's favorite animal?

I can see a wolf being her favourite animal.

❤️ RED HEART — what are three of your oc's positive traits?

She’s doing a pretty great job at not comparing herself to others. One of her quotes to live by is “you’re only competing against who you were yesterday”. 

But don’t get me wrong, she’s not obsessed with chasing perfection either, aside from her sports career maybe. There she wants to be the very best and she’s setting impressive goals for herself, she’s quite ambitious and she's willing to do whatever it takes to reach her dreams.

She doesn’t let gossip and rumours dictate how she should feel about a person. She doesn’t jump on the hate train without hesitation…heck, she doesn’t really jump on the hate train at all. She’s just not a hateful person, and if you have an issue with someone, there are better ways to deal with that than to let your whole soul be consumed with hate and rage towards them.

🤍 WHITE HEART — what are three of your oc's neutral/questionable traits?

She's got a bit of a “I'm not like the other girls” syndrome. It's something she grows out of as time goes but it's definitely there when she first shows up in the story.

…and now I noticed I misread the question, I thought it said negative. Well, the “I’m not like the other girls” mindset sure is questionable, eh? As a former not like the other girls person now not like the other swifties person, I’d say it’s complex. It doesn’t have to be entirely negative, it’s just…not very healthy overall. 

She can come off distant, cold and uninterested a lot of times, even if she is actually interested. It goes beyond the resting bitch face, which she sure puts on often unintentionally. I dunno. It’s like the emotional switch in her brain takes a bit to flip on. People who know her know that, but it can intimidate strangers. (which…can be a good thing sometimes, now that I think about it 😂)

You don’t want to argue with her. You just don’t. She’s not hotheaded, she won’t yell at you immediately, but she can do it. Her angry fiery part doesn’t show up often, again, if she’s pissed she’s more ice-like, but when the fire starts, you won’t soon forget it.

🧐 FACE WITH MONOCLE — is your oc more logical or emotional?

I think I sort of said it in the above answer – at first, it’s cold logic, rationality, analyzing facts and acting purely based on them. But a lot of times, the switch eventually flips and emotions kick in. And I'd say it depends a lot on the situation or the problem, too.

[ecargmura]

Oshi No Ko Episode 15 Review - The Shadow Of His Former Self

The first half of the episode ends the GOA and Abiko conflict happily yet there are still more problems as Aqua getting criticized for his lack of emotional acting. It turns out that his trauma from Ai’s death is repressing his emotions. I have to say that the transition from all the GOA-Abiko stuff to focusing back on Aqua was quite intriguing, but it flowed well.

For the first half of the episode, I do like that the weird game of telephone finally comes to an end as Abiko, GOA, Raida and Abiko’s editor are finally on a video chat with each other. If only they had done this sooner, this whole ordeal would’ve resolved earlier and the actors wouldn’t have to crunch the last two weeks of rehearsal for the revised script. Also, props to Raida for wanting the play to succeed to the point that he’d **** an old geezer’s ****—his words, not mine. I also like that he finally manages to convince Abiko to work together with GOA since he told her that the Ping Pong stage play was written by him.

Well, the resolution of this conflict was thanks to Aqua who now has an issue of his own in the form of emotions acting. Since he’s sixteen and he was around four when Ai died in front of him, it’s been twelve years since then. I do like that trauma just doesn’t go away and that he’s been living with regret and guilt for the past twelve years.

I feel like people say Aqua’s edgy, but he’s not. The trauma didn’t make him edgy; it made him empty. From what I can see, he likes helping people resolve their conflicts, even if he denies it. He says that it’s for his revenge plan, but I see it as a way to assuage his guilt from not being able to help Ai during her death. While sabotaging Ruby’s chances of being an idol was sort of jerkish, he did have good intentions as idol agencies are sketchy. He also helped Kana with the Sweet Today issue. He also helped Akane when she was getting hate comments and even tried to help the other members of the dating show cast make a video to let Akane know that she’s loved. He even invited Mem-cho to become an idol to help achieve her dream of becoming one. For this season, he even resolved the issue with Abiko by giving her a ticket for the stage play, which caused her to change her mind about the script and allowing Raida to get through her for good. While the trauma has caused him to become empty, helping people out were happy moments and it did feel as if recalling them has filled up the void in his soul in a way. It sucks that he only thought about happy memories after Kana accidentally triggered his PTSD.

The moment where the shadow of Goro showed up, preventing him from basking in happiness was really crazy. It was animated well and the color choices were a subversion of the usual bright colors Doga Kobo is usually known for. Like I mentioned in my previous review, how much of Aqua is Aqua and how much of him is Goro is still a mystery because when Goro died, he was reborn as Aqua and because the baby retained all of his memories from his previous life, Aqua never really had a chance to be an actual child. However, at the same time, it makes me wonder if Aqua was behaving how he did as a child because he had retained all of Goro’s memories and that made him develop an ego at an early age.

I’m honestly a sucker for sad boys, which is why I like Aqua the most in this show. I also tend to like sad boy x sad boy comforter ships a lot. I usually never had much opinions for Akane, but I do think she was the strongest presence in this episode with the way she actually figures out Aqua and Ruby’s connection with Ai and why he gets PTSD. Her analytical skills are crazy; she could seriously outclass any professional detective if she tried. However, I still do find it a bit…unsettling that Akane is comforting Aqua because she’s still acting the role of Ai but it’s something he needs right now as Aqua’s inner demons cannot be vanquished.

I wonder if Aqua can conquer this hurdle whether it be during rehearsal or during the actual performance. It’d be nice to see Aqua with emotions later on and not someone so consumed with revenge to the point that it’s the only thing fueling the emptiness inside of him. What were your thoughts on this episode?

[somethingclevermahogony]

OC Interaction Tag

Thanks for the tags @leahnardo-da-veggie , @kaylinalexanderbooks , and @illarian-rambling!

Leah's OC: Katherine looks like a fifteen year old girl, acts like a cryptid and is probably closer to the latter than the former. She's quiet, secretive, and rather creepy, at least to the casual observer. To someone who knows her (that is, her best friend/apprentice Dane and her elder brother L), she is a pathological snarker, has the worst authority issues known to any immortal entity, and likes chocolate gelato more than life. She'd gleefully pick a fight with anything from vampire teachers to the goddess of dreams for no bigger reason than because she could. That said, she does have a good heart.

Kaylin's OC: Gwen is a twelve-year-old girl with invisibility powers. She's extremely kind, compassionate, and empathetic, though has a bit of fire inside her. She's soft-spoken, loves reading, and appreciates nature, due to going on hikes with her family and takes morning runs to wake herself up. She has an intuitive sense to how others are feeling, to the point where she's often cited as the one member of her friend group who understands others and their emotions, despite there being a telepathic empath in the group. Gwen loves her friends deeply, even though she doesn't have anyone she'd consider a "best friend." She plays percussion in both her band class and an after school band and adores music. Gwen is very passionate about others, to the point where she can get stuck in others' problems. She gets increasingly more pessimistic about the future throughout the series, but that doesn't stop her from doing her absolute best work to change that. She's relatively impatient unless she can feel herself making a difference. Despite being shy, she lights up when comfortable around others, and can show a ferocious passion if necessary. She loves learning more, especially about other people.

Katie's OC: Avymere Kalaphon Spearsong III is a 153 year old elf and Duchon (gender neutral equivalent of Duke/Duchess) of the city of Salis. They act as a spy and political agent for their father, Archduke Eluan Spearsong, who rules Salis. They also keep watch for assassins, on top of playing the perfect, if ditzy, heir in front of the court. They tend to keep up a happy-go-lucky facade in order to disguise their true cunning and because of this, are very reluctant to let their true personality show, to the point that they've sort of lost who they are. The one thing they embrace with their full, honest heart is martial arts. Though it's seen as a lowly habit that the court indulges on account of the Duchon's 'airheadedness,' they really do love to practice Talmel Valkys and are quite the fighter. It's where they feel they can drop any acts they have up. Apart from that, they have a hard time socializing outside of situations they're not used to and get easily flustered when they don't hold all the cards, as they don't actually have much experience outside of the highest echelon of Salis society. Though well meaning, they also tend to come off as aloof and unaware of the problems of the common man, even though they truly believe that they are a servant of the people they rule.

My OC: Bop is a wind spirit of indeterminate age, at least 2,000 years. They don't actually remember how old they are. Bop is not a name which they gave themselves, but rather it is the name which has been given to them by Narul, a reference to their current living situation. It is not at all certain that Bop ever had an actual name before they were given one by Narul, certainly most spirits do not give themselves names. Bop is trapped inside of an Arkodian Bronze hammer, placed there by an unknown sage or group of sages centuries before the beginning of the story. It is unclear if they can be freed and what would happen if they were. They are blinded and deafened to the outside world unless the hammer which they are trapped within is held by a person. This allows them to access the mind of the wielder, to speak with them and to see and hear through them. Touching the hammer also allows the wielder to have access to some of Bop's magic, including the ability to heal minor injuries and an increase in strength. A person must be touching the hammer in order to communicate with Bop and to feel the effects of their magic.

They have become close friends with the current wielder of the hammer, Narul. Bop is a deeply caring individual, though centuries spent in the darkness of the deep sun's cave, their inhuman nature, and a reliance on the eyes of their wielder sometimes mean that the spirit can be somewhat naive and tactless. Their sense of humor is somewhat childish and they take particular delight in puns. When seen in the mind’s eye, Bop typically takes the form of an amorphous misty shape, an ever-shifting humanoid silhouette. So too does their voice shift, changing drastically in tone, depth, and speed over the course a conversation. Bop is defined by a lack of staticness, a constant nature of change.

Katherine and Bop: Bop would have no issues with Katherine's sometimes strange behavior, as a spirit they already have limited knowledge as to just what "unusual" or "creepy" behavior would be. They would enjoy the snarky attitude, as at least it is better than being alone. They might not approve of the fight's that Katherine gets into, but they would certainly be cheering in the background and yelling their own advice which would vary in actual quality. They would easily be able to see Katherine's good heart and would push them to show that more in their interactions with the world.

Gwen and Bop: I think that Bop would really enjoy getting to know Gwen. Bop has never actually talked to a child, besides Ninma, and I feel as if they would get along well with Gwen. Having an emotionally intelligent person to talk to I think would make them very happy. Bop would also happily go on hikes, as access to nature is something that has been almost entirely denied to them. Bop has a deep love for the natural world, if only because those are things that they have very limited access to. Bop has a similar passion for learning new things about the changing world. All in all I think they would make a great team, and certainly of the three characters in this particular post they would get along the best.

Avymere and Bop: I'm not sure how well this would go. Bop has been wielded by the more militant types before, and while they got along fine, they weren't particularly close. Bop would not be at all impressed by their age, as they have met at least two spiritbloods considerably older than Avymere, and are themselves much much older. I think that Bop would be friendly and try to get to know Avymere better, however I feel like Avymere might struggle. It's hard to keep up a facade when the person you are talking to is in your head. Bop has no concept of polite society, though they would certainly try to be a backset driver, giving advice to Avymere when it comes to social interaction. This advice would be well-meaning though not always helpful.

Tagging @roach-pizza , @finickyfelix , @faeriecinna ,

@scribble-dee-vee , @elsie-writes , and @willtheweaver

[sketchfanda]

A Little Moxie Love:Gavin's Mom has got It Going On!!

Springfield was that kind of town in a sense if you were to ask certain different people their opinions about it. Those who were born and lived there couldn't imagine being anywhere else but they sure as hell will complain about its problems. America's trash hole, the worst city around, just among the few nicknames and terms which came to mind with this pissant little town. For one woman of course Springfield and its issues were the least of her worries.

Now our lovely little ditz here, let's call her oooh I dunno Cakes, as in because she looked like a real piece of hot cakes, i mean you see that ass she's got packed away in these jeans?!! Anyways Cakes here was just parking her mini-van after having just returned from a grocery store run as she unpacked and began to haul her purchaes inside. A deadpan hum thinking of course Gavin or Caitlin wouldn't be bothered off their lazy asses to come around and consider helping her out. But really what else could she expect from those two, especially Gavin?

Well besides his being his usual pain in the ass self, calling her an idiot and what not but chalk it up to the choices she made in her youth. Choices that she was still dealing with the consequences of as she opened her front door to step inside, calling out her return to her kids, puzzled yet unsurprised to get nothing in the way of a response. No doubt Caitlin was busy chatting away on the phone or Gavin was likely being a rude little shit on one of those online games of his. One of these days she swears that attitude of his was going to get him in a hell of a lot of trouble.

Little did she know of course at this very moment, a hell of a lot of trouble had come Gavin's way in the form of the killer for hire misfits known as I.M.P., Yeah let's just say someone in hell had wanted to see that little shitstain and his sister dead.....well a lot of someones, christ it'd been a whole group that if they had them line up, it would've gone around the block, twice!! Long story short, it was a direct enough kind of job, get into the living world, find the two spoiled rotten brats and murder their asses!! It just so happened Mama Hotcakes had come back home just as they were in the midst of disposing of the bodies as the upstairs bathroom looked as bloody and messy as a slaughterhouse as Loona stood by the door keeping a lookout. Her ears twitching, nose flaring as she picked up the sound and scent indicating they had a witness situation pending.

Loona:*looks up from her browsing on her phone as she peeked out the door, looking back to her co-workers as they hunched and loomed over the blood filled tub.* "Hey Blitz, we got a situation. I think the mom just came home so ya know, fyi, she sees this shit? She's gonna freak the fuck out..."

Blitzo:*dressed in hazmat wear, as were Moxxie and Millie as they were hacking up the bodies and using bleach, salt and acid to melt them down. The clients were very thorough and distinct in how they wanted these little shits handled.*"Oh come the fuck on!! I thought we had her routine down!!"*waves around Gavin's skinned off skull, identifiable by his greasy shithead hair with its rat-tail pony tail. Moxxie giving him a deadpan glance behind the visor of his helm.*

Moxxie:"No, sir we didn't. You just said we were gonna go in and quote unquote ''Fuck these little rats up and let God sort them out!!". This wasn't all that well planned out in advance, we got lucky their mother was out at the time..."*Somedays it's a wonder their organization saw business with a former circus clown running things. Not that he would be bothered saying that to Blitzo's face, he was NOT in the mood for another of the former circus kid's wise-ass remarks about his manhood or lack of. For anyone who's been reading this story so far all very well know he wasn't lacking, no sir he was packing!! But I digress...*

Blitzo:"Okay criticism noted and ignored Moxxie, can't be helped so good on you for volunteering!!*That set off a few red flags in Moxxie's brain. Just his luck, his employer was once again looking to go along with a gut impulse instinct. he had to think and act fast. Otherwise this job might go more south than that whole springbreak fiasco, he was NOT a possum thank you!!*

Moxxie:"Wait volunteering for what?"*As he passed on some parts here and there to Millie who dunked them into the tub and stirred away. The chemicals working their way into melting down bone, viscera and skin. Pretty soon there'd be no bodies to find and Gavin and his sister would be likely already down in Hell pending punishment. Hey equal opportunity damnation, right?*

Blitzo:"Why running interference and distraction of course! Get out of those duds, pour on the charm and distract that Karen long as possible. I think this is gonna take us a while, knew that guy who sold me this bonesaw was lying. Cut through a human femur in 30 seconds my horny little ass!!

Moxxie:"but sir-!!"*Despite efforts otherwise, Moxxie couldn't even get a chance to protest as Blitzo pulled the hazmat suit off of him and threw him out into the corridor outside of the bathroom. Looks like the boss made up his mind so now he had to keep Cakes from being a witness by any means necessary, Millie shooting him an apologetic glance while Loona just shot him a thumbs up. Well this was likely to go one of two ways, the most likely being she sees him and mistakes him for a possum. Which would result in her screaming, wailing on him with a broom and try to kill him but time to see how fortune smiled today.*

Sighing as he shrugged his shoulders, the imp made his way to the stairs to go intercept the single mom, who paused half way up on her journey there as she indeed laid eyes on him. An awkward silence occurring naturally as the pair stared at each other, the imp certainly had to say, far as suburban moms went, this gal was more than easy on the eyes that was for sure. You couldn't really tell she'd even had two kids. But of course a part of his brain did remind him that it was time for the other shoe to inevitably drop as she finally spoke up.

Cakes:"Are you the gigolo I was expecting?"*That question seemingly out of nowhere threw the imp for a loop that was for sure. He wasn't sure how or why, of course, unaware that indeed the MILF had indeed been expecting such a thing. Until he remembered that indeed, they had on their way here from Imp City to the living world, wound up falling from the portal in the sky on top of some guy who looked like a male stripper. Leave it to Blitzo to be hasty reading the dimensional travel spell but least he had the bright idea to just tie the guy up and leave him behind the bushes.*

Moxxie:*Deciding he had to whatever was necessary, just shrugged and decided to go along with humor her presumption. It wasn't like he could pass for a Gigolo anyways but not according to Millie and a few others who'd think he put legit ones to shame. She'd likely think it was a prank or the agency pulled some false advertising then likely go Karen on them and call to complain, asking for the manager to provide her a refund. Speaking up as he finally replied.*"Yeah sure that's me alright...baby..."

Cakes:*Not noticing Moxxie wince at that cringey bit of cheesiness feeling like his sack of shit old man there (Seriously Crimson go fuck yourself), seemed to perk and bright up.* "Well wasn't expecting you so soon that's for sure. Weird costume but hey kind of a turn on. Doesn't seem like my kids are home so let's not waste anytime since you're here on the hour."*That threw the imp for another loop, she seriously believed him? Blinking as she scrambled up the stairs, grabbing and pulling Moxxie by his hand, following behind her due to momentum. And getting quite a view of her backside, seeing how tight those denim jeans hugged her legs, especially around that applebottomed ass of hers. Which only helped to distract him as he found himself taken into what he could only assume was her bedroom.*

Moxxie:"Oooh crumbs...."*Was about all he could manage to say as the milf didn't bother to lock her door, assuming it was just the two of them with her kids out and nobody else to bother them. The imp knowing full well said kids were dead and being disposed of by his co-workers in the bathroom. It was a miracle they didn't leave much of the house looking like a crime scene as he watched the single hot mama kick off her shoes and ditch her leather jacket and lime green cap. Showing off she had quite the toned body no doubt from a lot of exercise and yoga a woman her age would be into before she suddenly picked him up and placed him back flat on the bed.*

Cakes:"Now that I get a better look at you, you may not look like the kind of guy I'd see in sports illustrated but youu definitely are too cute to pass up."*The blondey quipped playfully and sensually, looming over the small imp making him feel cornered. He had to admit, this wasn't as scarousing fear boner inducing encounter like that whole fiasco with Martha before he found her peeling off his coat, followed by undoing and removing his shirt and tie. The milf purring as she found his comapct frame to be rather toned and nice to the touch.*"The whole bodypaint cosplay is a neat gimmick too, especially the horns, now then let's see what you're pack-"*Whatever Cakes was about to say was halted as she finished getting off his pants and bxoers, eyes widening and jaw dropping at the sight of Moxxie's erect length and girth.*"....Oh....My...God..."

Moxxie:"Uhm....should've warned you I'm kind of a grower...."*The imp tried to explain and reassure the hot mama before he gasped and groaned at her suddenly grasping his cock. Stroking it in her silky palm and fingers as her expression of shock gave way to awe followed by rising ecstasy. Biting her lower lip sensually as she rubbed her denim clad thighs together, feeling a goddamn waterfall flow between her legs as any and every man she'd been with prior became fading memories. The imp stud soon finding her plant licks and kisses on his shaft from tip to base, outright worshipping his balls with her tongue as she lubed him up with her drool before soon practically making herself suffocate as she proceeded to perform fellatio.*

The blonde bombshell just couldn't help herself, like some switch had been flipped inside her brain, setting her off into a bitch in heat mode that made her want to suck and blow on this cock. Rubbing her denim covered camel toe as she felt her pussy radiate with stickyness and warmth as if calling for her to get on letting this shortstack stud fuck her. Rut her like he wanted to put a baby in her and for the Love of all that was holy raise them right this time!! A thought that got louder in volume as her eyes burnt with a rising lust and she took in inch after inch of this long, thick womb hammering veiny piece of pussy pounding heaven, his sounds of arousal music to her ears.

Whatever doubts or hesitation Moxxie had before about having to, as Blitzo put it, run interference pretty much went south thanks to the intense thirsty blowjob this hot sexy mama was giving him. Her saliva practically drowning his shaft as her tongue lapped up his flowing pre as She unknowingly ticked off a few boxes in Moxxie’s sexual checklist. It was a little fact that only a few select women knew about Their favourite alpha male and it was that the raw desire and pleasure provided by a bitch that was clearly horny for him really turned him on. And this tall, blonde drink of water was really making him want to primal on her…and of course that was what he proceeded to do!!

Cakes:”OOOOOOOOH Fuuuuuuuuuuuck me fuckfuckfuck oh fuck me daddy fuck me fuck me hard!!”*Was about all the single mama that could definitely give Stacy’s mom a run for her money could say in between moaning and screaming in ways that there was no way the whole neighbourhood couldn’t hear them. That is when she could remember to use words let alone form sentences as many a female passer by or neighbour of varying legal sexual age and prime felt turned in and so envious, wondering why they couldn’t get that lucky. Making the men some of them had feel shameful and inadequate while the sexy bitch in heat continued to get pounded by Moxxie’s natural sexual lethal weapon doggy style, biting the grasping the sheets of her bed for dear life. The clapping of her asscheeks against that jackhammering imp’s pelvis as his length and girth ensured no other man was ever going to cut it when it came to satisfying her.*

Moxxie”Seeet unholy whore of Babylon…”*The imp couldn’t help but mumble, grunting as he continued to hammer away into the blonde bombshell’s pussy. Her naked body glistening with a sheen of sweat as the bed shook and creaked from how intense and wildly they were fucking. Knowing at this point that it was clear it’d been way, WAY too long since this woman had actually been sexually satisfied, so of course even it meant having to plow away until his balls ran dry, she had to so well fucked that she felt like she’d see God!! Or at least be knocked out long enough for the others to finish up with getting rid of the bodies and make their escape.*

Fuck her he certainly did, from massaging her juicy hips as she rode him cowgirl style, hearts glowing in her eyes as her bimbo airhead like brain became flooded with pleasure, to having this imp continue to rock her suburban mom world as he pinned her in between a mating press and a piledriver, working her insides like some erotic butter churn. And she was loving every damn second of it that she was actually forgetting she had kids for the time being, christ she thinks she mayve actually been falling in love, or was it just lust? Not that it ell mattered right now as the pair went at it in ways that were putting pornstars to shame, seconds going into minutes which woild become hours unaware they were being watched of course. Millie and Loona watching on with voyeuristic delight as their stud once again gave another needy slut a taste of vitamins Mox, the hellhound catching videos and pictures on her phone.

Blitzo:*pokes his head out from the bathroom door, steam coming out as as he worked away on the disposal and cleaning of the evidence.*”Hey is Moxxie done yet? The little shits’ corpses are pretty much non existent and I’ve been cleaning this bathroom of evidence so much the bitch coild be able to see herself on the floor!” *Yes indeed the disposal had been long since completed, the bathroom sparkling clean bar the equipment gathered up in the corner. The head honcho of IMP not quite picking up the telltale sounds of Moxxie’s ongoing sexual marathon with the brats’ hot mama. Somedays the guy could be denser than Mammon’s rotund stomach.*

Loona:*Rubbing her soaking wet thighs together, tail wagging as she and Millie continued watching the live porn show. Already thinking of her own oending fun times with her imp daddy after this gig that’s for sure.*”Oh yeah, the bitch is really…putting up a fight, he’s really got to go John wick on her….”*She lied unconvincingly BUt given being deadpan snarky and monotone tended to be her default mood set, of course her adopted dad would fall for it. He was the kind of guy you’d be able to sell a boat in the desert to.*

Millie:”Oh yeah it’s a violent fight, who knew a soccer mom could be so vicious….”*Leave it to Millie of course with that sincere country accent of hers to add to the bluff. Licking her lips at watching the air headed hottie’s thicc, toned tits and ass jiggle and shake as she became an addict for her man’s dick. Somedays coming to the living world was always fun because you never knew what sexy slurs and bitches could get lucky meeting her husband. It was hot and sexy as all fuck.*

Blitzo of course ought that load of tripe easily enough, shrugging his shoulders as h decided to give their crime scenes another clean over, including the brats’ rooms. Helping himself to looting some of their stuff of course, some living world material could sell for a mint back in hell, especially in the greed ring. The foursome finally making their escape after Moxxie finally called done on his “interference run”, clothes a bit messy due to hastily dressing back up. Sure he was a mess but not compared to Cakes, who was left in what remained of her bed, soaked with sweat and sex juices and a blissful smile on her face.

She’d almost wake up thinking it might have been a dream had it not been for the business card Millie had left in her night stand. Which of course provided Moxxie’s cellphone number and email, sealed with a kiss by the wrath shortstack hinting that her little gigolo wouldn’t and didn’t need to be a one off. Suffice to say, the sexy single mama was already looking forward to it, as she had herself quite an enjoyable shower, playing with herself as she fantasies about the gigolo who rocked her world. Wearing fresh set of her usual ensemble as she looked herself in the mirror, dare she be narcissistic but damn she was looking better than usual.

So much so that she got an idea as she took some naughty selfies, one flashing a tit and the other mooing the camera with her bubble butt as she sent them to Moxxie, adding his number to her contacts. This was definitely going to Something to talk about with her gal pals as she got out and drove out in her ride. Idly wondering, why did she have a mini-van……ah well. Yes indeed Moxxie had fucked her so well she forgot she was even a mom…..at leas for maybe another 9 months assuming he didn’t leave a bun in her oven. If not then well that could be arranged. For IMP it had been just another job…for Millie, it was her man once again proving he was an absolute unit stud.